Senate health-care bill: insurance premiums soar like a Tiger Woods drive
December 3rd, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |
The CBO predicts higher insurance premiums, but what do supporters say? From the Wall Street Journal:
“No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen in Study,” said the New York Times, while the Washington Post declared, “Senate Health Bill Gets a Boost.” The White House crowed that the CBO report was “more good news about what reform will mean for families struggling to keep up with skyrocketing premiums under the broken status quo.”
…the bill will increase costs but it will then disguise those costs by transferring them to taxpayers from individuals. Higher costs can be conjured away because they’re suddenly on the government balance sheet. The Reid bill’s $371.9 billion in new health taxes are also apparently not a new cost because they can be passed along to consumers, or perhaps will be hidden in lost wages.
This is the paleoliberal school of brute-force wealth redistribution, and a very long way from the repeated White House claims that reform is all about “bending the cost curve.” The only thing being bent here is the budget truth. …
The political tragedy is that there are plenty of reform alternatives that really would reduce the cost of insurance. According to CBO, the relatively modest House GOP bill would actually reduce premiums by 5% to 8% in the individual market in 2016, and by 7% to 10% for small businesses. The GOP reforms would also do so without imposing huge new taxes.
But Democrats don’t care because their bill isn’t really about “lowering costs.” It’s about putting Washington in charge of health insurance, at any cost.
Read the whole article: Senate Health-Care Bill Will Raise Insurance Costs.
(via FIRM)
tags: community rating, HR 3590, media bias
